The process should extend to the LGBT community as well. Sensitisation need not only be
These are matters of internal accountability and stakeholder engagement; they are matters
applied as a strategy to better inform facilities. Awareness, information and skills are also
of gender equity and representation within the complex diversity of the LGBT community
needed amongst key population service users, who need to be more conversant around
and constituency, engagement with which is necessary to prevent disillusionment,
health issues, rights literacy in general, and health rights in particular.
disenfranchisement and fragmentation in a sector that cannot afford division.
12. Achieving inclusive, representative, accountable good practice
on the outside requires inclusive, representative, accountable good
practice on the inside.
They also speak to resource mobilisation: where is the financing for women’s sexual and
reproductive health programming, what is being funded, and who might be making those
resources available? In the absence of clear answers, this may be an issue for research and
advocacy.
The Situational Analysis highlighted several areas for attention within the internal
institutional and management environment of GALZ itself that mirror some of the feelings of
under-representation and marginalisation expressed by members of the constituency when
they speak about the health facilities:
“We need a survey of health needs and concerns for women only. Not together
with the men”.
“Even programming in GALZ focusses on MSM. If there are, for instance, 10
projects, maybe 8 of them are for MSM. Where are the programmes for women?”
“Who is managing the GALZ offices? The men. I think more than three quarters
of the office is men. How can we expect the public to take us seriously as women
who have sex with women when we can’t even sort it out between us in our
own organisation?”
“Our name says ‘Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe’. But we don’t act like that.
GALZ is a boys-club.”
“I am a peer educator. I’m also a WSW. I spend most of my time promoting
services and programmes for MSMs, when there is nothing for women like me.”
“We don’t know who is speaking for us to these health facilities, or what is
being agreed on our behalf. Are the men speaking up for us strongly enough as
WSW?”
“We feel like we are being palmed off as members of GALZ to these facilities,
now that GALZ is not so much of a service provider anymore. But we are not
satisfied with just being bundled off to Wilkins. And now not getting services
at these places.”
PERCEPTIONS, PERSPECTIVES
Access to facility-based health services for LGBT people in
Harare & Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: A Situational Analysis
18
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